


Turning Tides Coming

by LydiaArgent



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/F, Gen, Team Teal - Freeform, alcohol cw, s13 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 00:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5070277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaArgent/pseuds/LydiaArgent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I got in the giant armor, Epsilon flipped his shit about Tex’s helmet, and we all fought off like a billion space pirates --”</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“Tex?” Carolina says. </i></p><p> </p><p> The fight's over, but Carolina and Tucker aren't done just yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turning Tides Coming

Maine steps on to the Pelican, and Carolina’s blood turns icy with adrenaline. Wash manages two giant, running steps backward, but even with her years of experience, instinct born of a life of training, Carolina still hasn’t brought her gun up.

Later she tells herself that she was observing faster than she was thinking -- blue armor, shorter than he should be, walking with a swagger and trying not to trip on an overexcited Caboose. More honestly, it was more paralyzing hope than anything more logical.

The moment is broken. “Those were some dickheads!” Tucker says from behind Maine’s helmet.

Wash runs a hand down his faceplate. “Where the hell did you get that?” He sounds very, very tired, and even more reluctantly impressed. It's more or less Wash’s default when talking to Tucker.

“Stole it off that asshole,” Tucker says. He actually puts his hands on his hips and does a turn. “You know, the one whose ship we just wrecked. Looks way fuckin’ better on me!”

Carolina cuts him off before he can moonwalk himself into a wall. “Epsilon, having fun running that thing?”

Tucker freezes. Everyone freezes, even Grif, who was almost asleep in a seat already.

“Guys?” Carolina says, worry and warning edging their way around a tone of command. “What the hell?”

“Epsilon, uh,” Tucker starts. “Shit. He’s such a goddamn dickhead. Leaving me here to defend his ass, which, I’m not gonna fuckin’ do.”

An audio file pops up on Carolina’s HUD. She listens, and her armor might be the only thing keeping her upright. A yell, a scream rises in her chest, meant for Epsilon or Tucker or Wash, anyone who could have possibly known this might happen and stopped it. For herself, mostly.

God, over a year with him at her back. What wouldn’t she have given, alone after Sidewinder, to have someone looking out for her like that, and now.

Tucker clears his throat, and Carolina looks up. Kimball is out of the pilot seat and standing at Carolina’s shoulder, a hand hovering by the small of her back. The Reds and Blues are all staring, and Tucker is shifting on his feet.

Carolina takes a deep breath around the lump in her throat. “What a jackass,” she says. Kimball wraps an arm around her waist. “Thinks he’s the hero of the story.”

“Right?” Tucker says. He sounds less steady than Carolina does. She punches him in the shoulder.

“Let’s get back,” she says.

Kimball nods and adds, “Let’s get _drunk_.”

They do get drunk. The loss of infrastructure on Chorus is devastating, but anywhere you can go in the galaxy, someone has a functioning still.

There’s really only one thing you can do when you come out of a battle like that, alive and charged bright with adrenaline and using it to run from the fact that not everyone came back to get shitfaced with you. By the time they get the Pelican back to the city center, soldiers are filling the street. They’re holding cups, any type they could get their hands on, instead of guns. Carolina pops her helmet and smiles.

Emily dashes up to them when they clear the ramp, her arms full of carefully balanced cups. “It’s a margarita!” she chirps.

Simmons takes a glass and a hesitant sip, and immediately starts coughing.

“Wimp,” Grif scoffs, and takes a swig. He gags.

“Wimp,” Simmons laughs.

Carolina brushes her bangs out of her face and takes a drink. It’s not as noxious and some of the stuff CT and Wyoming had managed to produce on the MoI, and is doped up with sweetener and something sour. 

Kimball is staring at her, and Carolina holds her gaze when she takes another long drink. Kimball bursts out laughing.

“I already feel bad for the people who end up doing shots with you.”

Carolina smirks and throws an arm around Kimball’s shoulder. “That’s going to be you.”

Kimball waves her hands. “No, no it is not!” But she doesn’t try and duck out from Carolina’s arm.

They weave through the crowded… Carolina supposes it’s a street. Strewn with burn scars and scattered with rubble from the blast that took out most of the city, but still definitely a passage between rows of run-down buildings. Voices, free of interference from helmets, echo between the empty warehouses. They’re definitely late to the party, the streets already getting sticky with spilled drink.

Landing the Tartarus, throwing Hargrove in the brig, and getting someone on at the UNSC on coms who could do something for them other than sputter had taken a while.

Military bases are always noisy -- the background of generators, vehicles, humming electronics, officers yelling, soldiers bitching about everything from the quality of their weapons to the way that asshole in the next bunk over snores. Carolina’s used to that. This street isn’t noisy; it’s rowdy. Music blares, clashing and tinny from tiny speakers perched on window sill fragments and in doorways. All the tension, dread, violent distrust that made living on the Armonia base painful (and painfully familiar) apparently got left behind when everyone spilled back from the battlefield.

It’s all-encompassing, contagious, and definitely fueled by moonshine. Carolina watches it wash over Kimball, the lines around her eyes softening, her shoulders relaxing in her armor.

Kimball lets out a deep sigh, almost a groan of relief.

Carolina and Kimball pass under a streetlight, and a group of soldiers catches sight of them. New Republic and Fed soldiers, standing in a loose circle around a large piece of rubble serving as a table, cheer and throw up their arms, a few of them staggering with the motion. Kimball sags a bit under Carolina’s arm and says, in a softer version of her General voice, “Glad to see you’re all having a good time. We all deserve it.” They cheer again, and one of the Feds raises his cup and yells “To Kimball!”

The small rush that goes through Carolina is getting familiar. Carolina was trained for leadership, nearly every damn day of her life, and she fucked up. Kimball fell into it and landed sprinting, or never landed at all and is still gliding. It’s amazing to watch.

The soldiers are trying to convince Kimball to do a shot with them, and Carolina decides to leave them to it. She wraps her arms tight around Kimball’s waist and says “My radio’s on if you need me.”

Kimball turns in her arms and considers Carolina. Kimball has to tip her face up to meet Carolina’s eyes, her gaze a little fuzzy with alcohol. She goes up on her toes to tip her forehead against Carolina’s. Carolina meets her halfway.

“We won,” Kimball says between their lips. “This is winning, at least for tonight.” 

It will take far more than alcohol to get Kimball to forget the next battle, always waiting, always drawing you in. A truce fueled by a common enemy and revenge, even with the high of a victory behind it, can’t last.

But for tonight, Kimball’s can try, can believe that something they’ve done here will hold. Carolina can press a kiss to the side of Kimball’s mouth.

“Try to have some fun, Carolina.”

“Will do, General.”

Kimball’s eyes are bright when she turns back to the cat-calling group. Kimball’s right -- Chorus needs this night, this win. Carolina needs to get out of here.

Carolina snags a pitcher from a ledge and fills her cup to the brim. She dips her head toward Kimball’s ear to say “I’m going to get some air. My radio’s on if you need me.”

Kimball looks up, eyebrows raised, and Carolina kisses her on the cheek and winks. She lets Kimball to deal with the fluorescent green shot being pushed into her palm.

The sounds of the party filter in through her helmet, hollow around the silence. She went decades without an AI, without Epsilon chatting in her ear. It shouldn’t feel so empty.

A few people cheer when she goes by, making her way through to the middle of the city, and she raises her cup. The streets are unfamiliar now, the explosion having wiped out anything like a landmark. The asphalt is ripped open to expose underground passages; familiar stairways end abruptly. Her HUD guides her through the blackened remains of the one-time base. It does so with a disconcerting minimum of sarcastic commentary.

A pitch-black ramp runs between two concrete walls in a hillside, and Carolina emerges on a moonlit cliffside.

Both of Chorus’ moons are out, one huge and high overhead, the other glowing red around the edge of a shadowed mountain. The sound of the river echoes up from the valley, the bare trees doing nothing to muffle the roar.

The electric fence, of all things, is still standing, still buzzing with warning about the cliff just beyond.

Carolina prods at one of the power sources, thoughtful. Then she gives it a swift, easy kick to the base, and it tumbles over with a small groan.

From behind her, Carolina hears “Major party foul.”

Tucker’s climbing up into the hillside. Carolina can hear him behind her, see the pinpoint that marks him on her trackers, and can’t bring herself to look at him yet. “Property damage,” he says. “Or whatever.”

Carolina takes a slow breath, and turns around to stare pointedly over his shoulder at the still-smouldering remains of the city center.

“Shut the fuck up,” Tucker grumbles.

It’s so weird, so damn incongruous, Tucker’s bullshit coming from the direction of that armor.

“Don’t you have a party to be at?”

“Oh, you mean the one you ditched?”

“You’re here too,” Carolina points out. Which is pretty annoying, actually.

Tucker shrugs. “I see those idiots too much anyway,” he says. He probably means it to sound flip. He manages wry but fond. It makes Carolina’s jaw tighten. “And unlike some supersoldiers, I don’t have a smokin’ hot girlfriend down there. What the fuck, Carolina,” he adds with a laugh.

Carolina turns on her heel and walks out to the drop. Hoping like hell Tucker takes the cue, she takes off her helmet, breathes in the smoky air. “Why are you here, Tucker?” she asks. 

She can _feel_ him looming when he comes up behind her.

“For real for real?” he asks. “It got way too fuckin’ loud. Not the party,” he says at Carolina’s raised eyebrow. He swears continuously under his breath while he pops the seal on Maine’s -- his -- that fucking bowling ball of a helmet. “Figure your shit out,” he mutters, tucking it under his arm. Carolina blinks.

“They’re, uh,” Tucker waves his hand vaguely at the helmet, “in there or some shit. Grey’d tell me I’m wrong but what the fuck ever, they’re obnoxious as hell.”

“Jesus,” Carolina breathes out. “Epsilon wasn’t fucking kidding.”

“Guess he knew what he was talking about sometimes,” Tucker says. “We got out. Wouldn’t have, without them.” He pushes his dreads out of his face with a shaky hand.

“He was a jackass,” Carolina says. Tucker’s head whips around, and Carolina realizes her fists are clenched in painful fists. She tries to breathe but it comes shallow. “He knew, he knew something was wrong. He fucking lied.” Her throat is tight, voice coming thick. The whites of Tucker’s eyes are showing, wide in something like fear, and Carolina looks away fast. “Who gives a shit about running the armor,” she says.

“Uh, you did,” Tucker points out, followed by clapping a hand over his mouth and “Please don’t kill me?”

“No,” Carolina says, and swallows hard. “You’re right. You’re right. I wouldn’t let it go. It’s on me.”

“Oh my god,” Tucker says. He reaches out, puts a hand on Carolina’s shoulder, and when nothing horrible happens, continues. “What the hell. He was a grown-ass AI who made his own dumbass decisions. He did it to haul our asses out of the fire. Shit,” he pulls his hand away to run it down his face, “If you’d been in there instead of us, he probably wouldn’t have had to let the goddamn dogs out.”

“Yeah,” Carolina snorts. “That’s why I went flying off a cliff. Because I had everything under control.”

“Flying off a cliff again,” Tucker adds helpfully.

Carolina’s mouth falls open. She punches Tucker in the shoulder, hard, and chokes on a laugh.

Tucker immediately starts whining, which is kind of comforting. “Ow, motherfucker! Like you even need ‘em. You beat up a goddamn monorail on your own.”

“Monorails don’t fight back,” Carolina says, but hears Epsilon telling her _‘You’re Agent Carolina!_ ’

Tucker is staring at her curiously. “Do you want them?” he asks. “The fragments.”

Carolina’s face gets cold, quick panic draining her blood. “What?”

“There’s a fuckin’ busload of them now,” Tucker says, waving the helmet. “Arguing and shit. Work great, I guess, but I don’t like AI bullshit.”

The helmet shakes slightly as it moves through the air. Carolina’s eyes narrow. That’s not grieving, not stress; it’s something else very familiar.

“Tucker,” she says, carefully. “How are you feeling?”

“Oh, y’know, like I got hit by a train. And super dizzy, which is bullshit, because I barely got any of that hooch yet--”

Carolina takes Tucker’s elbow -- still teal, that helps with the strangeness of whose armor is under her hand, a shade that fits nicely text to her own -- and guides him to sit on the ground. It takes him a minute to interrupt his rant long enough to notice.

“Oh,” he says. “That’s way better.”

Carolina rolls her eyes. “The mods take a lot out of you,” she says, digging through her armor compartments while she talks. “The AI are necessary to control the more technical aspects of the equipment and to regulate the output, but your own body is a major source of energy for mod use,” Carolina recites, lessons drummed into her in a tense lecture hall a long time ago.

Tucker isn’t listening; he’s staring at the ration bar Carolina finally finds. She tosses it to him, and he fumbles it before ripping into the wrapper and inhaling it in three bites.

“Holy shit,” he sighs.

“That’s why I’ve got ‘em,” Carolina says.

“I’ll do you one better.” Tucker waggles his eyebrows and pulls an enormous flask out of an armor compartment.

“Well,” Carolina says. “Kimball did tell me to have fun.”

***

They drink steadily, quietly, and after a while, not so quietly.

“I don’t, don’t, fucking get it,” Tucker slurs.

Carolina blinks heavily up at the stars a few times. “Don’t get what?”

“What?”

Carolina taps him on the forehead. They’ve ended up sprawled on the ground, the damp on the grass tickling the back of Carolina’s neck. Tucker’s head ended up somewhere near her shoulder, and she can see from the corner of her eye that he’s managing to drink from the half-empty flash without sitting up with some success. She twists her arm awkwardly to steal it from him.

“Hey!”

“What don’t you get?”

“What? Oh,” Tucker waves his hands in the air, like the lazy movement will help his drunk brain get the words out. “You. All you Freelancers and your AI shit. I had those assholes for like, an hour? And that was fucked up.”

Carolina gets hung up on the plural and takes a pull from the flask. The AI are riding in Tucker’s armor, not in surgically-implanted neural contacts. However many fragments made up the. . . person that was Epsilon aren’t sitting against Tucker’s brain. But the feedback from that kind of interface is still intense, the small voice in your ear not the half of it. New reflexes imposed over old, tactical decisions made and transmitted to muscles before your brain has any real input.

That’s the advantage, of course. It’s also meant to take months of preparation, of guidance and training.

“Seriously, Carolina, take ‘em. You know what the fuck you’re doing.”

Her breath catches hard in her lungs, at the offer, the confidence, the promise to run like light over the ground again.

She’d tried to make it in time. Epsilon had called for extraction, and she could hear the security at the door, and god, had she flown.

There was no way they could have made, no way for the Reds and Blues with all their uncanny luck to fight through half an army of mercenaries. No way for everyone to make it out. It’s what Carolina used to do. Take that impossibility, leap off a crumbling building, make it _happen_.

Chorus won a second chance today, an opportunity to make their planet their home again. Carolina isn’t sure what she’s won.

“Dude, chill, you’re making a scary face,” Tucker says. Carolina kicks him in the ankle. “Just an offer,” he says.

“No way you can keep using that armor without them,” Carolina says. It’s a dodge, and it’s true.

Tucker pokes dubiously at his own chest. “I kinda like it,” he admits. “As long as it’s blue. Too fuckin’ creepy otherwise.”

Carolina’s glad they’re on the same page.

“How did you get it, anyway?” she asks.

“Oh, man!” Tucker exclaims. He tries to sit up and falls right back down. His enthusiasm doesn’t take a hit. “So we’re running through the ship, right, and Sheila takes us to the creepiest room, um, _ever_. It’s all weapons and armor and shit, Freelancer stuff mostly.”

“The brute shot,” Carolina says in sudden realization.

“Grifshot? Yup,” Tucker says. “Then Epsilon made the Meta’s armor, like, pop out of the floor! Simmons almost pissed himself.”

“Simmons?” Carolina asks, laugh coming out in her voice.

“Who is telling this story?” Tucker demands. “Me, that’s who. _Simmons_ almost pissed his pants, I got in the giant armor, Epsilon flipped his shit about Tex’s helmet, and we all fought off like a billion space pirates --”

“Tex?” Carolina says. She’d like to ask an actual question, one that might resolve the scattered assault of half-formed thoughts into something useful. Instead, she manages to push herself up to sitting and ask, “What?”

“Like in a museum. A creepy museum,” Tucker clarifies. “All hovering above pedestals and shit.”

Carolina grabs the flask back from Tucker and takes a long pull. Learning Tex’s long, ridiculous history with the Reds and Blues hasn’t done a lot to cut through Carolina’s own memories of Tex -- always there, always winning, always better. Even now, knowing just why Tex had always come out on top, it apparently still preys on her mind. She’d have denied it even a week ago. But an ancient alien AI had pulled that damn cocky drawl from Carolina’s subconscious, put her face-to-face with Tex, gotten past every wall Carolina had thought she’d built.

Then. All of them dying, again, Carolina frozen and helpless and screaming in her own mind. Tex went down swearing and fighting, just as mean as she’d always been.

Carolina had never been able to beat her, never would. Fine. But now Tex is mounted like an animal for some asshole’s gratification. All that swagger and fury, tied up and languishing, and the sheer violation of it almost chokes Carolina.

She punches the earth. Tucker jumps and swears, glaring up at her. “What the fuck, dude? Way to be a buzzkill.”

Carolina’s buzz is definitely not killed, but that’s not about to stop her. “We’re getting her out.”

“Not our job,” Tucker grabs for the flask, and Carolina hold it out of his reach. “Goddamnit,” he says. “I fucking deserve that. Hell, I brought that!”

“It’s our job now,” Carolina informs him.

“Why?” Tucker groans. “Isn’t that why there’s like, a hundred UNSC assholes on the way? Take stock of everything on the ship and throw Hargrove in jail for like, a billion years?”

“And what,” Carolina asks, fighting to keep her voice even, “Do you think they’ll do with her?”

“Her helmet,” Tucker says. “Not like there’s a hostage.” He doesn’t sound totally sure about that.

No one in Freelancer spent much time out of armor -- training and missions coming back-to-back, time to relax hard to come by -- but she remembers them as some combination of face and helmet. Tex was only that black armor, usually coming out of the shadows, always inseparable from the person beneath. Carolina understands why, now, and that makes it harder to let this go.

“Tell me she should stay there,” Carolina says, staring Tucker down.

He rolls his eyes. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m right.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Tucker groans. “Where’s my goddamn helmet.” Carolina smiles, bares her teeth, and throws him the helmet. Tucker laughs and hesitates, just for a second, before fumbling it on. Carolina jostles his shoulder a bit, trying for gentle.

It turns into a shoving match that lasts half the walk to the landing site and ends with Tucker sprawled out in an algae-streaked puddle, Carolina bent double and snorting.

“It looks good,” she says. “Back to nature.”

Tucker is still whining about it when they slow and crouch low in the shadows to approach the ship. The Reds and Blues hadn’t exactly crashed it, but ‘landing’ would be a little too generous word for the skidding, screeching journey to a stop. It could have been worse, Carolina will admit, but not to Grif.

“Hargrove’s still in the brig,” Tucker mutters. “Thank fuck.”

A small UNSC force had been speeding toward Chorus during the last battle, doing their best to monitor the situation, hearing enough to place every person on the ship under arrest.

It wasn’t unlikely, Carolina had told Kimball quietly during the walk back to the city, that Hargrove could get off with a slap on the wrist. A lot of friends, a lot of money, all adding up to a lot of power.

Kimball had raised her chin, looked up to the sky. Carolina wondered how often she’d done that during the years of rebellion, revolution, war, the only aid coming down only ending up as the worst of it all.

“We’ll make sure he pays,” Kimball said. “We’ll do what it takes.”

Carolina had shivered in the warm evening air.

Technically, the Chorus army will be under investigation as well. The on-planet UNSC forces were, thankfully, not stupid or suicidal enough to try and detain the entire remaining population, all of whom were armed and experienced. There was a quiet understanding that as long as no one tried to leave the planet, the UNSC soldiers would stick to guarding the last of the mercenaries, keeping the ship secure until the investigation could begin in earnest.

They’re about to blow that quiet understanding to shreds if they get caught.

“Three guards on the main door,” Carolina says. “No good.”

“There’s a secondary loading bay,” Tucker says. His head is pushed forward, like he’s squinting to see something in the distance. Not used to 3D schematics, Carolina thinks. He’s not doing too bad, considering. “No guards.”

“Take point,” Carolina says. Tucker stares at her. “You’re the one who knows where we’re going,” Carolina points out.

“Shit,” Tucker says. “Okay, uh, sure, let’s go.”

They keep to the shadows, cast long by the rising red moon. Tucker’s armor flickers black and gray and deep green, and Carolina tamps down hard on any envy.

“Okay, we have a clear shot to the serial killer trophy room,” Tucker says. “Some patrols, who the hell knows where they’re gonna end up. Be ready to run.”

“Always,” Carolina promises.

The ship is dark, silent, all the engines still. Auxiliary power is on -- the first set of doors they come to slide open with a hiss. They freeze, waiting for anything, but all that’s in the next hallways is more dim emergency lighting.

Carolina breathes out when they make it to what is obvious the ‘serial killer trophy room.’ A mug is shattered on the floor, a table overturned and honeycombed with charred holes.

“Hello, Agent Carolina.”

Carolina’s weapon is up and aimed at nothing particularly useful in --

“Point two second reaction time,” FILSS. “Very impressive, Agent.”

“Holy shit,” Carolina says weakly.

“Don’t pass out,” Tucker says.

“Shut up,” Carolina says. “Good to hear your voice, FILSS.”

“Likewise,” FILSS says pleasantly. “May I ask why you’re in a secure area of the ship?”

“FILSS, baby,” Tucker says ingratiatingly, “You wouldn’t give us up, right?”

“I would not,” FILSS reassures him. “I was wondering if I could help.”

Carolina leaves Tucker to flirt with an omnipresent artificial intelligence. So dark it stands out from the shadows, the remains of Tex’s helmet, and then Carolina is standing in front of it, hands outstretched and hesitating.

“I’ve inactivated any alarms,” FILSS says quietly. “Is this why you’re here?”

“Yeah,” Carolina says. The helmet feels smaller than she’d expected. She traces the shattered hole with a finger. “This is it.”

“Will it be useful to you?”

“Maybe,” Carolina says, then sighs. “Where would it end up? In storage? A research facility? On display as a goddamn cautionary tale?” Her voice is getting too loud. She swallows.

FILSS doesn’t answer.

“Epsilon would have hated that,” Tucker says. “Better we take it.”

Carolina’s shaking her head. “No,” she says. “It’s for her.” A true warrior, she thinks. “She deserves better.”

They all deserved better.

“Carolina?” Kimball’s voice is faint and staticky. “Where’d you get to?” The noises of the part cut in around her voice.

Carolina smiles. “Hanging out with Tucker,” she says.

“Kimball,” she explains. She doesn’t manage to keep the grin out of her voice, and Tucker starts making kissing noises at her.

“Oh, no,” Kimball laughs, which is fair, because Carolina has Tucker in a one-armed headlock. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Tex’s helmet is safe in Carolina’s other hand. “I won’t,” Carolina says, and knows it’s entirely true. “I’ll be back soon.”


End file.
